When Time Doesn't Fly
by redgoldenmist
Summary: Before leaving Max at the age of 15, Max and Fang exchanged a promise to meet on her birthday in 20 years. Now, 20 years later Fang is waiting in the cave where the hawks fly for what may come.
1. Chapter 1

_I realise that this has been done many times before but I really wanted to try my own too. If you think it resembles yours or someone else's too much, contact me and I can take it down. Also, I haven't yet read Fang or Angel so much of this is my own imagination _

**Fang**

Sitting cross-legged on the floor of the cave, I sat down to wait for my past and perhaps my future to come flying in. I didn't know if she would come, if she could come or if she were even alive at this stage. After I left I had tried to keep tabs on them all, finding out how they were getting on. And at first it was easy; the media couldn't get enough of them. But then reports and pictures became harder and harder to find, to the extent that in the last few years I hadn't heard a whisper of them. They seemed to have disintegrated. I couldn't have caught up with them if I had tried. But then, maybe that was the point.

As much as I wanted to, I couldn't stop thinking of them all, the family that I had willingly abandoned. As each birthday went by I imagined them all fighting over blowing out the candles on the cake, always wondering how Iggy's sight had improved and how Max would be fairing now, trying to keep a mob of boys from Nudge and Angel. She'd had to bring them all up during her own childhood and then, from the age of 15, alone. I would understand it if I were left to wait here on my own today.

Twenty years later, I'd said, we would meet twenty years later on her birthday. That would mean Max would be 35 now, if she'd survived the situations I'd left her to face single-handedly. How would she have changed in those 20 years? Of my own accord I had muddled through the last 20 years alone, not even trying to replace my family. As if anything ever could.

I'd been sitting on the cold ground with the hard rock pressed against my back all morning, continuously scanning the sky when a dot I had seen in the distance began to get larger. A shape started to take form, a shape with wings and long hair blowing in the wind. How long it had been since I had seen another human being fly and the gracefulness of it took my breath away. It was as I was thinking this that she landed. Max, my leader, my best friend had come.

She landed as graceful as she had flown in but instead of moving towards me, stood silhouetted against the sky at the mouth of the cave. I stood and looked up to meet her eyes, trying to erase any trace of the guilt and regret that I was feeling from them. My first glimpse of her and all I could think was that she looked so tired. The years had marked her as I shouldn't have let them. Her eyes held such a slight hint of sadness and betrayal that I nearly failed to meet them properly. She looked as if she had been living with the strain of the world rested solely on her and I suppose, because of me, she had.

The lines on her face showed the worries of the flock, the world, and I thought, maybe me. Her pose was still so upright and self-assured but her eyes seemed to lack some of the confidence of our youth, the days when we thought we could fight everything physically. Leaving her I had known that at least she would have always had the flock, to look after her and take care of her where I hadn't.

She took a hesitant step towards me, as if unsure herself if I would turn and run from her. I wanted to run to her, to tell her how I would be here from now on; that I would take care of everything for her, knowing that it was too late to say such things. All I could do was to stand and stare. She was so different outwardly and yet still seemed so similar that I could read her emotions as the passed through her eyes. I smiled at the thought of the different emotions we had shared.

**Max**

I was flying towards I knew not what, alone, as I had been living for some time. It was not the solitude that got me but the lack of support, that there was no one to turn to when I needed someone when I had been there through all of their problems. This meeting, should it happen, was what I dreamed would give me back my friend and perhaps my family, both of which I had been missing for so long. Yet I feared that I had set so much store in a meeting that may not even happen and that could not possible give me everything I had been lost.

Perhaps I could have dealt with _the loss_, as I had come to call it, with the support of the flock. But without Fang there beside me through every decision the rest of us had soon begun to fall apart. Fang had always been the one to back me up, my second-in-command, holding the flock together even when some of my decisions were unpopular especially concerning school. Although even with his presence things might still have panned out in the same way as they grew older, I could never help but feel that at least with Fang there I would not have been left alone as each one of them flew from me in anger, looking for freedom outside of my protection. They had gone with words that left no room for hope of return and still seared through my heart on nights alone in the dark. My life until then had been devoted to ensuring their safety and their rejection of this had left me without purpose.

How would he react on seeing me now? If he even came. He might not remember a promise to someone he used to know, in a past life, whereas I had been living in hope for years of what today would bring. He might not recognise, he might not want to know me if he does. Uncharitably I feared the life he must have lived outside the flock, successful without its restriction whereas I had been lost. He would have moved on, as the rest of the flock had, leaving me again to remain in the past.

Growing closer I scanned the area for some sign that I wasn't the only one to remember. I shadow on the floor in a corner alerted me to his presence and despite myself I gasped. Even with all my dreams of this moment I don't think I had ever imagined it coming true.

I landed at the mouth of the cave, not wanting to step any further, not wanting to put myself out there only to be rejected again. I believed that since he had left, he should be the one to make the first move. And he did. Standing up, he didn't take his eyes from me. We were both mesmerised by the differences that we must have known would be there but which were still surprising.

Did he look like he regretted how our lives had turned out? I don't know but I didn't think so. For a moment I was afraid that perhaps he had just come here to gloat, to show me how well he had done for himself away from all of us. I admit, at that instant I nearly ran and jumped back in the sky. I couldn't bear hearing that the best years of my life had been merely a blip in his.

But then he smiled. My smile, which was really only a twitch at the corner of his mouth but which I knew conveyed all his love and care for me. The smile we had shared so long ago, before. The smile that signified the bond between us that we would always have.

And then I knew. Both of us had made our mistakes but here was the chance we had been waiting for to put it right. I could gain a friend and a family member and he could stop forever regretting the decision he had made twenty years ago that had turned out to be the biggest and most irreversible mistake of his life.

My body just quivered to be near to someone again, someone who cared and I was so glad that it would be him. Wanting to appear in control of my emotions I still couldn't help taking a hesitant step forward as that smile promised all that I wanted him to be.

My step turned into a shuffle forward and then a run and I fell into his arms, the comfort of those arms that for so many years I had been denied. And as I felt them circle protectively around my back and waist they gave me the message that I had been waiting for since I was 15, wishing that there was someone left to give it. I am here. You are safe. Everything will be alright.


	2. Chapter 2

_I wasn't planning on a second chapter, as I didn't want to detract from the first but I just couldn't leave it the way it was. I'd also never realised how disheartening it was to see the numbers of hits go past 150 with only 2 people feeling that the story was worth a few minutes of their time in leaving a comment so a big thank you to Integrity21 and Dreamer-.-LYNX But anyway, onwards and upwards_

_Disclaimer: I do not own anything_

**Max**

For hours we sat, lay, knelt next to each other, sometimes talking and sometimes just looking at each other, almost in disbelief at the others' presence and proximity. I couldn't help myself from reaching over every so often just to touch his hand, to convince myself that he was really there. And every time the warmth of his skin radiated to mine letting me know that a dream had really come true. I knew he must have felt similarly as each time my hand met his, his fingers closed over mine in reassurance and his eyes found my own.

We'd decided to stay in the cave instead of maybe going to a café to talk as I'd always felt uncomfortable discussing a mutant life after escape from a dog crate in a place where mothers are helping their own young children lead normal lives. It turned out to be a good decision too as we watched first the sun go down leaving a smudge of light behind and then the stars, one by one, replace it, equally glittering, in the sky. At that moment we sat quietly in the darkness gazing out with Fang's arms wrapped tightly around me, as we had often done together once the rest of the flock had gone to bed

Fang had missed out on some of the most exciting years in the lives of the younger children but from his stories it didn't seem as though he had been pining for us. His now well-established computer company was flourishing and took him all over the world discovering places that before we had only the means to dream of. However, despite the glittering life he seemed to have led I could not find any trace of another human being with whom he had established any kind of deep, meaningful friendship or love. And no matter how selfish it was, as for many years I at least had had the company of the flock, I could not feel guilty that I was glad he had not found someone to replace us.

Perhaps he was omitting things so as not to sour our meeting and if he was I could not judge him for it for I too had not been entirely truthful, but the life he painted no matter how glamorous seemed empty of human contact and he lacked enthusiasm in describing it. It was also clear that a parting shot from Iggy as he left that he was going to go to Fang had been unfounded. Fang had had no more contact with the Flock than he had had with me since he left and again a sharp pain shot across my chest as I realised Iggy had been prepared to go that far to hurt me.

I wondered whether Fang have noticed that the memories of the Flock I was trying to pass onto him were all over a limited time period, say excluding the last 8-10 years. How would he react to the fact that through my actions they had all become separated from each other and from me, that we had lost our togetherness and our being as a flockafter his departure, that they had felt their lives would be better fulfilled without me in them? Would he blame me for having let them get lost and would he turn from me too? I knew I couldn't try to keep it from him but I would only go as far as to promise myself to answer him truthfully when he, as he inevitably would, ask. It would not be me who would break the first, thin thread of understanding and compassion that I had established with someone in a long time.

**Fang**

As we watched the first stars prick silver against the velvet darkness of the sky I begun to revert back to the person I once was. Years of solitude and a lack of establishment had left me wandering from place to place, city to city in search of short term amusement, but as I lay against Max I felt that I had finally found a place that I could call home, that is, where ever she would be.

What I'd always regretted the most was not seeing Nudge, Angel and Gazzy grow up, I'd known Iggy and Max could take care of themselves, yet judging by how Max's eyes never left me and how she kept reaching out towards me as if I would disappear again, perhaps I had been wrong. The memories and milestones that I thought I had missed for ever were acted and sketched out for me over the next few hours as Max borrowed in turn Iggy's, Angel's, Nudges and Gazzy's accent and mannerisms to illustrate the years that I had missed.

I heard of Nudge's first boyfriend and we both laughed over Iggy's protective reaction to it. Max seemed to waiting for some expression of shock on my hearing of Iggy and Nudge's relationship but I had often suspected and wondered that Max had not as she had got to know them longer than me.

Her pride was evident in telling me of Gazzy's sporting successes at university and she wasn't alone in that. Who would have known years ago that one day our fights with Erasers would be so advantageous in a basketball game? Though conversely I didn't want to know how he managed to intimidate the members of the opposing team

She described how beautiful Angel had looked as Prom Queen, with her hair like this and her dress like that, the small details didn't interest me but what did interest me was how well my family seemed to have done in life. I thought there would have been resentment in me; that there lives had moved on so swiftly and so successfully without me, but there was only pride in what years ago I may have been a small part of and hopefully soon would be a larger part of.

But I suppose like everyone, I too had not wanted to admit how much I regretted leaving so many years ago. I painted my life truthfully but with the knowledge that others would have found more joy in it than I did. While perhaps Iggy would have loved the difference in sound of Provencal France and Nudge would have relished the fashion of Milan, I could only ever think of the nights in front of the television eating ice cream with those I loved that I had missed.

Enjoying Max's anecdotes for their teenage years it suddenly struck me how grown up they would now seem when I saw them so far removed from these stories. They could even be married or have children by now! Realising this I then asked the question that had been nudging me for a while, "Max, where are the rest of the flock right now?" She looked straight back at me through wide and sorrowful eyes, "I lost them Fang, I'm sorry, but they got lost."

_Any length of reviews, suggestions and constructive criticism are very welcome_


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